Image: Dull Knife Battlefield (Public Domain)
On this day in history, November 25, 1876, American soldiers under the control of General Ranald Mackenzie obliterate a village of Cheyenne residing with Chief Dull Knife on the Powder River during the Dull Knife Fight. The strike was retribution against some Native Americans who had joined in killing George Custer and his soldiers at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
While the Sioux and Cheyenne won one of their most significant victories at Little Bighorn, the battle was the beginning of the end of their capacity to fight the American government. News of the carnage at Little Bighorn was received on the East Coast during national centenary celebrations on July 4, 1876. Angered at the killing of one of their most celebrated Civil War heroes, many Americans called for a deepened military fight against the Native Americans.
The government reacted by directing one of its most effective Indian fighters to the territory, General Ranald Mackenzie, who had formerly been the bane of the Commanche and Kiowa in Texas. Mackenzie led a military expedition up the Powder River in central Wyoming, where he discovered Chief Dull Knife’s Cheyenne village. Although Dull Knife himself does not seem to have been implicated in the battle at Little Bighorn, there is no doubt that several of his warriors were, with at least one of his sons also taking part.
The Dull Knife Fight was a Great Plains battle in Wyoming between the United States Army and the Northern Cheyenne during the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. The battle fundamentally ended the Cheyennes’ capacity to wage war.
After the Rosebud and Little Bighorn battles, Brigadier General George Crook accepted reinforcements and began pushing up the Bozeman Trail against Crazy Horse. After discovering the location of a Cheyenne war party, he ordered General Mackenzie into Wyoming to locate them.
Mackenzie left Camp Robinson, Nebraska, with almost 1,000 troops, including 11 companies of cavalry. He also had a large squad of 400 Indian scouts, including Pawnee, Shoshone, Arapaho, Sioux, Bannocks, and Cheyenne. The expeditionary force of 1,400 officers and men left Fort Fetterman on November 14, 1876, accompanied by four artillery companies, eleven infantry companies, and a medical staff of six surgeons. The Indian scouts “scoured” the area for a radius of 40 miles. A train of 168 wagons, seven ambulances, 400 mules, 219 drivers and attendants, and 65 packers in the pack train supplied the column. They were delayed by a snowstorm at Cantonment Reno until November 22.
On November 23, a Cheyenne Indian from the Red Cloud Agency apprised them that an “extremely large” Cheyenne village was located on the Crazy Woman Creek, further upstream from the current U.S. camp, in a Bighorn Mountains canyon. General Mackenzie was ordered to take the Indian scouts and most cavalry to find the village. He led 1,000 men, one-third of whom were Natives.
Finally, on November 25, 1876, Mackenzie discovered Dull Knife’s and Little Wolf’s camp on the Red Fork of the Powder River. The Cheyenne warriors were celebrating because of a recent triumph over a Shoshone village.
At dawn, Mackenzie, and his force of over 1,000 soldiers and 400 Indian scouts began firing on the sleeping village, killing numerous Natives within the initial moments of the action. Some of the Cheyenne, though, managed to escape into the adjacent hills. They observed while the American troops burned more than 200 lodges – containing all their winter food and clothing – and then slaughtered their horses. When the soldiers discovered souvenirs taken by the Cheyenne from American soldiers they had killed at Little Bighorn, the aggressors felt vindicated by their confrontation.
The Pawnee warriors associated with the U.S. soldiers fought exceptionally well against the Cheyenne. One Second Lieutenant and five enlisted men were killed in action. Chief Dull Knife’s Cheyenne warriors finally abandoned their village. The Cheyenne village of 200 lodges was utterly demolished, and the soldiers seized about 700 “heads of stock.”
Dull Knife lost three sons in the engagement. The surviving Cheyenne initiated an 11-day trek north to the Tongue River, where Crazy Horse’s encampment of Oglala Sioux offered them shelter. However, many small children and older people did not survive the cold voyage. Devastated by his losses, Dull Knife convinced the remaining Cheyenne to capitulate the following spring. The army dispatched them southward to Indian Territory, where other beaten survivors of the remaining years of the Plains Indian wars would join them.
Starving and freezing, many survivors surrendered at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, by April 1877. After a year of living on in which they were destroyed by disease and hunger, many – including Dull Knife and his followers – escaped a reservation in what became known as the Northern Cheyenne Exodus.
Other survivors refused to surrender. Many of Dull Knife’s tribe moved north along the Bighorn Mountains, finally reaching the Tongue River. A portion joined Chief Crazy Horse’s Oglala Sioux group on Beaver Creek, and on January 8, 1877, they would fight with Crazy Horse at the Battle of Wolf Mountain on the Tongue River in Montana.
The Dull Knife Fight ended all Northern Cheyennes’ resistance to the United States. General Crook contacted the War Department stating, “This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as those Cheyennes were not only their bravest warriors but have been the head and front of most of all the raids and deviltry committed in this country.” There were a few more clashes, but by 1884 the Northern Cheyenne people were restricted to the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
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